I prefer a dark scheme myself, mainly because it doesn't strain my eyes as with a bright / white / default scheme. When it's late in the evening and I'm looking, sometimes even staring at my code, can give me a headache.

I personally use default on all my IDE's, mainly because i can't be Arsed to change it, and default is perfectly fine. I now and then Arange my icons (important stuff to the right) and i have a folder with wallpapers but that's about it.

I just don't understand why you can't use the default theme/colours/settings. Is it so terrible?

What if you get a real job programming and have to look at a colleague's computer and can't read his code because his screen isn't black with green text on it.

I really don't understand why you'd take the time to fuck around with that stuff. Maybe I've grew out of it. I used to change my desktop theme and arrange my icons. I used to have the taskbar at the top, and the side, and have it auto hiding. Now when I see someone has changed that stuff it just makes them seem ridiculous - changing stuff, not because it's any better - just because they can, to prove they know how. Like anyone would be impressed.

Are you kidding? Nobody changes settings to impress someone. I see your point about a job in programming but that doesn't mean you can't adjust the aesthetics to your liking at home, does it?

I just don't understand why you can't use the default theme/colours/settings. Is it so terrible?

What if you get a real job programming and have to look at a colleague's computer and can't read his code because his screen isn't black with green text on it.

I really don't understand why you'd take the time to fuck around with that stuff. Maybe I've grew out of it. I used to change my desktop theme and arrange my icons. I used to have the taskbar at the top, and the side, and have it auto hiding. Now when I see someone has changed that stuff it just makes them seem ridiculous - changing stuff, not because it's any better - just because they can, to prove they know how. Like anyone would be impressed.

I've found a dark background to be lighter on the eyes during long programming hours.
I've been using a darker theme for about 4 years now and I can still help my colleagues out while they use the default scheme with no problems.

I just don't understand why you can't use the default theme/colours/settings. Is it so terrible?

What if you get a real job programming and have to look at a colleague's computer and can't read his code because his screen isn't black with green text on it.

I really don't understand why you'd take the time to fuck around with that stuff. Maybe I've grew out of it. I used to change my desktop theme and arrange my icons. I used to have the taskbar at the top, and the side, and have it auto hiding. Now when I see someone has changed that stuff it just makes them seem ridiculous - changing stuff, not because it's any better - just because they can, to prove they know how. Like anyone would be impressed.

I use a dark colour scheme and have my taskbar at the top because I prefer it. It's my computer and my environment so I set it up to fit how I work best.

bright white colour schemes can strain your eyes, it doesn't affect everyone, but it's there, specially later in the day. I know I make sure all my desktop wallpapers are dark for that reason (I don't change my themes though).

I use Gedit on Ubuntu and Notepad++ or Visual Studio on Windows. I tried to get code blocks working, but just couldn't get it how I liked.

Which is great and all, I mean I love consistency, but the Windows task bar performs a task more akin to what the dock does in OS X so really it makes no sense whatsoever to have it up the top.

You see the dock and windows task bar are both used to launch program. The top bar on OS X works pretty much the same way as the menu bar on most windows apps with the exception of the Apple menu and menu bar icons.

Oh also, content:

I know my font is kinda on the large side but I have pretty poor vision. Also I find it kind of a pain to use dark schemes when I'm in a brightly lit room so in those cases it looks like this:

Oh also I use a font called Meslo which is a slight modification of Menlo that allows the user to pick from three different line heights. Mainly I just like to have my code more spaced out so I'm using the medium height variant here.